Here Be Dragons

A quest against all odds to change the hidebound American healthcare system, the priceless and hear-earned leadership lessons gained along the way, and a prescription for the future.In Here Be Dragons, Web Golinkin shares his leadership experience in helping to "retailize" the healthcare industry. Today, millions of people benefit from accessible, affordable healthcare at walk-in clinics close to their homes that are open seven days a week, providing high-quality basic healthcare at reasonable prices. In 2020-21, almost everyone in the United States benefited from the access to COVID-19 testing and vaccinations that these clinics provided.But retail clinics did not emerge without a fight, as they faced strong opposition from the medical establishment, overly restrictive government regulations, and skeptical third-party payers, not to mention consumers who were conditioned to believe that quality healthcare could only be delivered in in an office or a hospital on someone else's schedule and without having any idea of its cost.Here Be Dragons is the true story of what happens when you are bold enough to try to effect significant change in a hidebound, multi-trillion-dollar industry. The fact that retail-based and urgent care clinics are now a permanent part of the healthcare landscape is evidence of success, but getting to this point for one of their earliest and leading movers has been a wild and frequently rough ride that challenged all the passion, endurance and street-smarts that Web could muster at every step along the way.